Historic Preservation Commission to review hotel projects

The city of Milwaukee’s Historic Preservation Commission on Monday will review a pair of hotel projects, one that restores two historic buildings in the former Pabst brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee and the other seeking to demolish five 100-plus-year-old buildings in a historic district in downtown Milwaukee.
Oregon, Wis.-based Gorman & Co. is planning an $18.8 million project to redevelop the Brew House building and the Mill House building located northwest of West Juneau Avenue and North 10th Street in the former Pabst brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee into a 90-room extended stay, beer-themed hotel.
Gorman has an option to purchase the buildings from The Brewery Project LLC, which was formed by Zilber Ltd. founder Joseph Zilber, who died earlier this year. The Brewery Project is transforming the former brewery complex into a mixed-use urban neighborhood.
Jackson Street Management LLC, which includes Ed Carow and Mark Flaherty of Milwaukee-based hotel development firm Wave Development LLC, wants to build a 200-room, 10-story Marriott hotel wrapping around the Johnson Bank building located southwest of Wisconsin Avenue and Milwaukee Street in downtown Milwaukee. The $50 million project will not require any city subsidy, said spokesman Evan Zeppos, but the developers are seeking federal new markets tax credits for the project. However the project is facing some opposition because of plans to tear down the 100-plus-year-old buildings.
Ald. Robert Bauman, who represents the downtown area, threw his support behind the Gorman project but is staunchly opposed to the Marriott project. Bauman said he “enthusiastically supports” the Gorman hotel proposal, which he described as “an excellent example of the adaptive reuse of an historic building” in addition to being complete in terms of the level of detail necessary to enable the commission to make a decision.